Mariners Acquire Funny Names

Thank goodness he's wearing pants.

On some teams, you're lucky if the funniest name available happens to be "Casper," and why not?  It's a solid name, fairly fun sounding but not ridiculous.  There is no shame in a team having a Casper as their funniest player name.  The Mariners, of course, aspire for only the greatest in all aspects of their organization (editor's note: except the baseball part), and as such not only acquired one Casper Wells, but also the immortal Charlie Furbush.

Alright, to be fair, the Mariners had to pay a high price to acquire such hilarity.  Yes, Doug Fister (you barely even know 'er!) will be sorely missed, both for his pitching ability and his hilarious, juvenile name.  I mean, the Mariners really had never been graced with such a hilarious name as Doug Fister in their history, but I suppose the public wanted a less horrifying image brought up by their funny names.  Now Charlie Furbush?  Come on now. Family appeal right there, that's for sure.  That may just be the greatest last name in sports since Gerald Firecrotch joined the New York Knicks in the 1960s (look it up.)



Regardless of names, this is a pretty solid piece of work by the Mariners at the trade deadline.  Not only did they bring in two average MLB players who happen to be young and maybe, just maybe, have some upside in Wells and Furbush, they got a solid 3B prospect (20-year-old Francisco Martinez) and a PTBNL that is probably actually good and not Matt Stairs in any way.  Along with that, the Mariners got rid of injury-plagued Erik Bedard for Trayvon Robinson (the names!) and Chih-Hsien Chang (the glorious names!), two upside-heavy young outfielders.  Simply put, the Mariners used the only real tokens they had to get younger and, possibly, better.

A bit more in-depth, Casper Wells appears to be about as close to an average corner outfielder as imaginable.  He bats about .270, he has a little bit of power, and he can slide over to center if he absolutely has to.  In short, he is perfectly usable but not about to win a game by himself, regardless of his current hot start for the M's (.375 avg.)  Furbush seems about the same, a classic solid relief pitcher (3.62 ERA) who can swing over and give you an OK start if he has to.  Martinez is hitting quite well, though not exactly tearing up the place, in double-A, which is damn good for a 20-year-old.  Robinson was apparently one of the better prospects in the Dodgers system who seems content to stick with the Pat Burrell approach to hitting, which is to say never swing at anything ever.  Chang has some upside, so hooray there.  There's really nothing else we could ask of GMZ.

Oh wait, we could ask for good free agent signings.  Yes, we need those too, Miguel Olivo and Chone Figgins are basically atrocious.